Relive the past decade with some of its best, films, TV shows and pop culture

The Denver Post

Thursday

Dec 31, 2009 at 8:00 AM

Pixar led the revolution in high-tech animation

What an animated decade it’s been.Over the past 10 years, animation has exploded. It is now a multiplex staple.Animation techniques have woven themselves into live-action movies in ways Roger Rabbit only dreamed of. In “Avatar,” James Cameron uses motion-capture technology, the same tool that came to prominence with Robert Zemeckis’ “The Polar Express.”Chalk up the 3-D surge to the ways animated stories lend themselves to the treatment. And in related news, graphic novels found their way to the big screen in record numbers, among them “Sin City” and “Watchmen.”Through all this, one name has remained synonymous with the boom: Pixar. Yes, the company’s first feature, “Toy Story,” opened in 1995. But the seven features released this decade (“Monsters, Inc.,” “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille,” “WALL E” and last summer’s “Up”) have cemented the company’s reputation as a laboratory of the imaginative.In 2006, Disney brought Pixar into its fold for a deal worth a reported $7.4 billion. Yet Pixar’s creative profile remains its own.Now most of the studios have their own animation mini-studios or production relationships to animation outfits. Twentieth Century Fox bought Blue Sky Studios in 1997. Its first feature was “Ice Age.” In 2004, Dreamworks SKG, home to the ogre Shrek, spun off Dreamworks Animation SKG.Even the indies have gotten animated. In 2003, Sony Pictures Classics’ delightful “The Triplets of Belleville” went up against a fish called Nemo for the feature-animation Oscar. Since then, the discerning indie has distributed “Waltz With Bashir” and “Persepolis.” Both were Oscar contenders.This year, Focus Features released “Coraline.” Roadside Attractions opened “Battle for Terra.” Indie man of whimsy Wes Anderson directed “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” a stop-motion marvel.In 2001, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences instituted the Oscar for Animated Feature Film. “Shrek” won. But since then, Pixar has taken four of the eight Oscars back to its Emeryville, Calif., campus: two for Brad Bird’s “The Incredibles” and “Ratatouille, two for Andrew Stanton’s “Finding Nemo“ and “WALL E.“There were, of course other trends of note: Since war was declared in Afghanistan and then Iraq, there has been a stream of films — mostly documentaries — about run-ups to war, warfare and warriors. Kathryn Bigelow’s feature “The Hurt Locker“ is sure to be nominated for a best-picture Oscar in the new decade. It may even win. With “Million Dollar Baby,“ “Mystic River,“ “Flags of Our Fathers,“ “Letters From Iwo Jima,“ (in Japanese, no less), “Gran Torino“ and now “Invictus,“ Clint Eastwood continued his relentless climb toward the pantheon of American directors. Then there’s the ongoing period we can deem the Meryl Streep Restoration.Still, Pixar was the high tide that lifted all boats with stories that never pander. The booster-seat set could be wowed by the inviting characters and the wit. Because the filmmakers honored their own inner kids, adults were just as welcome on the joy ride.Lisa Kennedy, The Denver Post

Maybe “The Sopranos” was the best, but “American Idol” ruled

The 2000s were good and awful for TV.What image deserves to stick in our minds as the signifier of what the medium became in the first decade of the millennium?A certain New Jersey mobster is a contender, having monopolized the water cooler for thinking viewers for seven years.When James Gandolfini accepted the Emmy Award for his work as Tony Soprano, the moment represented the wonderfully artistic heights the medium achieved in this decade, particularly on HBO.A succession of brainy series on cable — “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “Six Feet Under” and “The Sopranos” plus AMC’s “Mad Men” — demonstrated a new kind of television, worth discussing and analyzing as literature.Other images vie to stand as emblematic of the decade:B Perhaps the box set? Encompassing a rich list of TV dramas and comedies, DVD sets earned special status as keepers, worthy of home-video libraries. The idea of marathoning through a series, avoiding commercials and watching one installment after the next, came into its own.Maybe Walter Cronkite, quintessential TV news anchor, whose passing marked the end of an era? It’s possible to argue that the archetype he epitomized passed into history as an influential shaper of public opinion.Certainly the NBC peacock, plucked by corporate upheaval at the end of the decade, deserves special mention. Pending regulatory approval, a venerable TV network is to be subsumed into a cable giant.Might the image of the decade be the reflection of You, the consumer, as envisioned by Time’s Person of the Year 2006 cover? In television, the shift to users controlling information was apparent in iReporting, anchors blogging and podcasting, YouTube aggregating, and the DVR, all techno-endeavors that altered — some say democratized — the ways information and entertainment are spread.True as far as they go, but none of those sufficiently conveys the gestalt of the decade as experienced by the bulk of the audience.No, the single defining television image of the decade is the talent show. Coming full circle to Ted Mack’s 1948 “Original Amateur Hour,” a gaggle of shows broke from the crass, situational “reality” TV pack to revive interest in singing, dancing, designing, remodeling and even losing weight.The performance requirements constituted a welcome departure from the voyeurism of “Big Brother” and the drinking/dating, locked-in-a-loft, stranded-on-an-island shows. Megahit “American Idol” brought scores of viewers to the tube starting in 2002, remade the TV and music-industry economies and spawned other shows, which likewise had enormous pop-cultural impact beyond music.The best talent shows, reborn for the post-Warhol era, didn’t just gratify everyone wanting 15 minutes of fame. They required contestants to work for their exposure.At home, these semi-scripted shows made talent scouts and critical observers of us all.And sometimes, they even got the winners right.Joanne Ostrow, The Denver Post

9/11 attacks unleashed outrageousness

The image will remain seared in the minds of everyone who saw it: New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani standing on the “Saturday Night Live” stage shoulder-to-shoulder with two dozen uniformed firefighters and police officers.It was Sept. 29, 2001, and the wreckage of the World Trade Center was still smoldering, but Giuliani wasn’t wasting any time. He urged a return to normalcy and assured us it was OK to laugh again — even in the face of mind-blowing tragedy.In many ways, it set the stage for the tone and variety of stand-up comedy to come in the anything-goes 2000s. This was a new world with new rules, and comedians followed suit.From the angry, no-holds-barred political screeds of cutting-edge comics like David Cross to his opposite, the blue-collar, red-state comic Larry the Cable Guy, comedy pandered and challenged, enraged and pacified.Punishing and defending the Bush White House became the stuff of stand-up, and instead of retreating from discussions of our growing national divide, comedy took it on with a vengeance.Relatively traditional comedians such as Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes and the late George Carlin fared well with brilliant material and delivery, but so did alternative and indie comics. Digital video opened avenues for budding comedians, and humor generally moved away from traditions that had defined it for much of the past three decades, such as two-drink-minimum clubs and one-size-fits-all material.Granted, the most acclaimed stand-up of the 2000s was often aimed at the brain (Patton Oswalt, Paul F. Tompkins), but it was also benign (Brian Regan, Jim Gaffigan, Demetri Martin), charming (Flight of the Conchords), crude (Sarah Silverman, Lisa Lampanelli) and just plain weird (Mitch Hedberg, Maria Bamford, Tim and Eric).Stand-up has always been a pulpit for free speech, and the past decade proved that the mic is louder than ever — which is good, because more people than ever are listening.By John Wenzel, The Denver Post

Wizards, puzzles, pundits and a tectonic technological shift

This could go down as a transitional decade for the book-reading public. J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyers turned boy wizards, aging-yet-agile history professors and teenage vampires into cottage industries.TV talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey made obscure authors into megasellers with a simple recommendation, prime fodder for the plethora of book clubs that sprang up around the country.Old standbys like Stephen King and John Grisham continued to churn out books that the public couldn’t resist. We lost some of our literary lions, like Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer, who came into their own in post-World War II America. Others of that era, such as Philip Roth and John Updike, remain viable but are aging.But in the 2000s, nonfiction is the big comer. It’s been a chaotic decade out there. Terrorist attacks, two wars, political polarization and almost total financial collapse — you can’t make this stuff up.Remember hanging chads, swiftboating and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? How much did you lose when the housing bubble burst? The issues of the day feed a burgeoning blogosphere where anyone with an opinion and a computer has an easy outlet.The rise of political talk radio — almost exclusively a right-wing phenomenon — and of pundit-driven cable TV has given us voices and faces to go with the opinions. And nearly every one of them, it seems, had a book in them in the past 10 years.We’ve had best-selling books from the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter and, most recently, from Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. Opinion sells, particularly from the political right.Although there have been plenty of books written about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there has yet to be written that seminal novel set in either place. There has been no fiction to match Norman Mailer’s “The Naked and the Dead” (World War II) or Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried” (Vietnam). But stay tuned.As we move into the next decade, a couple of things are on the horizon. First, if you want to write a book, go for it. Anyone can do it on the Internet, and there are plenty of places that — for a fee — will give you help. Selling the book is another matter.Perhaps the biggest change facing the reading public in the near future is the decline in paper-and-ink publishing. Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader is catching on and others are in the race.Soon, if you want to curl up with a good book, you’ll have to be sure the batteries are charged.By Tom Walker, The Denver Post

The triumphant return of the überproducers

When you think about the sounds that defined the decade, it’s easy to rattle through the artist roster that gave us our soundtrack: Beyoncé, Nickelback, Britney Spears, U2, Jay-Z, Radiohead, Justin Timberlake, Kelly Clarkson, the Black Eyed Peas, Gnarls Barkley, Eminem and Green Day.And while these artists were the faces of the pop music industry over the past 10 years, many of them relied on producers more than ever to define their sound — and to write and shape the music that would become their bread and butter. We saw the re-emergence of the überproducer throughout the 2000s, and while some were quieter than others, few were as prominent as the artists they supported — or, in some cases, propped up.Still, the decade truly belonged to them.Some of most prominent producers: Timbaland, Ryan Tedder, Mutt Lange, the Neptunes and Pharrell Williams, Flood, Butch Vig, Danger Mouse, Kanye West, Diplo, Swizz Beatz, will.i.am, Dr. Dre, Scott Storch and Max Martin.Yep, Beyoncé relied heavily on her now-husband, Jay-Z, and others for some of her biggest songs. Jay-Z himself gave a boost to his former go-to producer, West, thus launching his solo career into a shared orbit.Timberlake’s debut, “Justified,” thrived on the hot production of the Neptunes (who produced and co-wrote “Like I Love You,” “Rock Your Body,” and five other tracks) and Timbaland (who produced and co-wrote “Cry Me a River” with Storch).And it goes on.Max Martin, who recently co-wrote Katy Perry’s hit “I Kissed a Girl,” was single-handedly credited with kick-starting the Britney/boy-band revolution in the late ‘90s. He’s was also all over Clarkson’s last few records, co-penning the hits “Since U Been Gone,” “Behind These Hazel Eyes” and the more recent “My Life Would Suck Without You.”Clarkson’s most recent hit, “Already Gone,” was penned by Tedder. Clarkson recently criticized Tedder because she thought the song sounded too similar to Beyoncé’s “Halo,” another Tedder composition. And while the songs share a certain aesthetic, the accusation is a natural byproduct of this producer-ruled relationship.The producers are calling the shots, and it’ll be interesting to see if that changes much in the next 10 years.By Ricardo Baca, The Denver Post

Digital world exploded in a chaotic, creative blast

Call it the Me Decade, version 2.0.The blurring of our public and private lives through social networking and blogging gave rise to new levels of ego-stroking and self-promotion over the past 10 years. But rather than retreating from one another (as author Tom Wolfe argued we did in the 1970s), this brave new world of technology found us more interconnected than ever.And it wasn’t just user-generated videos of puppies and skateboarding accidents that had us glued to glowing screens. We streamed movies to our TVs and downloaded them to laptops while video games infiltrated the mainstream by reflecting broader interests and activities. And sites including Facebook, YouTube and Twitter affected every corner of the arts and entertainment world, whether its denizens realized it or not.Napster proved the shocking speed with which we adopted the notion of “free” music. MySpace and YouTube weren’t just alternatives to record labels, audition reels and paid advertisements; they became proving grounds for commercial draw. Musicians such as Colbie Caillat got record deals by becoming fantastically popular on MySpace first, and in the case of Colorado bands like the Fray and 3OH!3, MySpace was a barometer of real-world popularity.It was the decade of the DVR too, when the idea of appointment viewing (TV networks telling us what to watch and when) retreated and consumers took their TV on demand — never mind that many of us were already enjoying our TV on DVD.Digital changed everything. It made animation hot again at the movie theater. It allowed entire libraries to fit into our pockets via Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s inescapable iPod. But it also made professional-quality video and audio software standard on many computers, turning 12-year-olds into budding filmmakers and musicians.And the digital world flowed back into the real one when blogs became books and, in the case of “The Julie/Julia Project,” a movie. Indie e-zines like Pitchfork helped launch bands such as Arcade Fire and continued drawing out countless, squirming niche audiences from the splintered trunks of old media.Twitter not only became a rallying spot for fans of Ashton Kutcher, Britney Spears and Jimmy Fallon, but also a marketing tool for publicists and a forum for creative types to tout their music, dance, comedy and visual art.Ever-multiplying micro audiences gathered under virtual banners not just because Google searches showed them the way there, but because they wanted to make the trip. And the online world’s rapid integration with handheld mobile devices like iPhones and Blackberries (already on their way to replacing straight-up MP3 players) made these connections instant and instantly gratifying — or annoying, depending on your tolerance for the nonstop barrage of pixelated information.The bottom line: virtual connections became real for many artists and their one-click-away audiences. In the ever-morphing world of digital culture and its attendant copyright concerns, it was suicide to ignore the possibilities and perils.By John Wenzel, The Denver Post

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